The View/From Hamden; Inventive Energy Taking Flight

By CHRISTINE DiGRAZIA

Published: July 20, 2003

ON a recent morning in an office building in rural Bethany, Joe Bango Jr., a 42-year-old electrical engineer and inventor, was spewing futuristic ideas like an overloaded popcorn popper.

As kernels of inventions boomeranged in his mind, he bounced from his laptop computer to his bookshelves to his collection of antique engineering marvels.

''This is the world's first pacemaker,'' he said, pointing to a big, gray-metal contraption with numerous dials and wires.

He pointed to other gadgets and said, ''This is a power meter from the turn of the century, and this is one of the first long-distance telephone amplifiers.''

Then he paused and looked around his office. ''I guess I've got stuff just about everywhere,'' he said.

And then some. Ever since Mr. Bango was a precocious child with a predilection for scientific principles, almost every day has brought him a new discovery.

Whether the ''stuff'' he talks about is scribbled on Post-it notes all over in his office or in his home in Hamden, it all eventually leads to a new contraption for Mr. Bango, who is president of Connecticut Analytical Corporation, a manufacturer of medical gas-detection equipment in Bethany.

His company is currently working with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to design a new fuel delivery system for satellites that will be used to test Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity in space.

Mr. Bango already holds or has pending patents for products that include a fluid that removes scratches from compact discs; a computer security program; and a lie detector that uses magnetic resonance imaging of the brain instead of pulse and heart rates.

''I'm always looking for novel solutions to complex problems,'' he said. ''There isn't anything that doesn't interest me and I want to learn as much as I can. It's a blessing and a curse. I can't sit still.''

It is a bit of ancient physics involving a simple candlewick that led Mr. Bango and his partner, Dr. John B. Fenn, the 2002 Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, to be chosen by NASA for a $600,000 grant to test gravitational waves, which Einstein said pass through space like ripples in a pond.

The candlewick concept, developed by Mr. Fenn, is also the basis for an anthrax detection and collection system the two are developing for the Marine Corps' office of naval research. Mr. Bango hopes to turn the model into a commercial anthrax detector for home and office use.

''He's always been full of ideas,'' said Mr. Fenn, 85, a former professor of chemical engineering at Yale University and currently a professor of analytical chemistry at Virginia Commonwealth University.

''He would try his ideas out on me and I would try mine out on him,'' Mr. Fenn said. ''We were quite simpatico from the beginning.''

To win the NASA grant, Mr. Bango's five-person company, which also includes his father, Joe Bango Sr., had to compete with 350 companies and groups of researchers from Yale University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology.

''Now, they're our subcontractors,'' Mr. Fenn said of the M.I.T. and Yale groups.

Mr. Bango said that NASA hired his company to devise short-range and long-range solutions for delivering fuel to a new micro-satellite system via a ''small, simple and reliable'' pump. The micro-satellites must remain stationary in space - but because of Einstein's gravitational theory, NASA expects the units to be pushed out of place by the sun's energy. That is where Mr. Bango's device comes in; his company's fuel-delivery system is expected to be able to move the satellites back to their original position using very little thrust so as not to upset their configuration.

''This system, known as capillary force, has been known for thousands of years,'' Mr. Bango said as he displayed an animated explanation on his computer screen. ''Think of a kerosene lamp; it's the adhesive attraction of the fluid to the wick balanced by the cohesive properties of the wick.''

As he spoke, the video showed a wick absorbing ink.

''This is our little rocket engine,'' he said.

The theory is based on Mr. Fenn's Electrospray Mass Spectrometry technology - his Nobel-prize-winning method of generating highly charged droplets of liquid to create thrust.

''The current NASA fuel-delivery system uses a lot of energy,'' Mr. Fenn said. ''Our system can do this using very little wattage and velocity.''

Attempts to reach NASA colleagues were unsuccessful.

Because electrospray technology can also be used to conduct particle analysis, Mr. Bango and Mr. Fenn are working to design a system that would detect and collect nerve agents (such as anthrax) for the Marine Corps' naval research office.

''The ideal thing would be to make an electronic version of a dog's nose,'' Mr. Bango said.

A similar device would have made a significant difference for soldiers affected by airborne pathogens in the 1991 Gulf War, said Gary Tepper, associate professor of chemical engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University, who is working with Mr. Bango on the anthrax device.

''If a soldier in a battlefield wanted to determine what he or she had been exposed to, this device would have collected samples of the pathogens and identified them,'' he said.

Mr. Bango's interest in rocket thrusters and homeland security comes as no surprise to those who know him.

''Joe was very artistic and curious from when he was a small child,'' said his father, Joe Bango Sr. ''At age 5, he played the flute and he drew pictures with perfect perspective. He was always asking, 'How does this machine work?' My wife introduced him to books and museums and he just took off.''

When Mr. Bango was 11 and a student at Hamden Hall Country Day School, he started his own radio station with amplifiers, microphones and a weak radio transmitter.

''The range was limited to just our neighbors,'' he said. ''But then I bought an old Army surplus transmitter for about $100 and went on the air. It was a blast. I was actually able to reach people in the area.''

It was also no surprise that Mr. Bango's favorite class at Hamden Hall was science. In fact, Edward J. Maydock, his ''charming, but absolutely unconventional'' science teacher, now serves as a science consultant to Mr. Bango's company.

''Joe was the kind of student who acted like a catalyst in class,'' Mr. Maydock said. ''Kids would gather around him because he was a spark plug.''

He added: ''We were always staying after school to do projects. He was just a glowing, intellectual beacon.''

Photos: Above, Joe Bango Jr. working with an experimental anthrax detection system. Left, a display of items in his research lab in Bethany, where Mr. Bango is working on projects for NASA and the Marine Corps. Top left, a collection of vintage engineering items in his office. (Photographs by Thomas McDonald for The New York Times)